‘The moment demands more than declarations of principles. It demands a qualitative leap in our international articulation and coordination. We, the communist and workers’ parties, have the historic duty to weave a network of effective solidarity, one that is not limited to statements, but translates into concrete actions:
In breaking the fascist media blockade, using the platforms to spread the truth about Cuba, Palestine and all peoples under aggression.
To stand with the Cuban people in their just struggle to lift the criminal blockade against Cuba, by mobilising parliaments, unions and social movements.
Strengthen the mechanisms of economic and technological cooperation between our countries and organisations.
And, fundamentally, to advance the theoretical debate on 21st-century socialism, adapting Marxist and Leninist principles to the new conditions of the digital revolution, communication, and the ecological crisis, without ever renouncing the central objective: the full dignity of man.’
-Miguel Díaz Canel
President of Cuba and First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Miguel Díaz Canel’s addressed the 24th ‘International Communist and Worker’s Parties’ conference in Havana on 8 August 2026 appealed to communists across the world to take direct action against the US blockade of Cuba. He urged on the assembled parties to take a ‘qualitative leap’ away from words and instead ‘build popular power from below’.
As Díaz Canel explained, we are in a period ‘of extreme intensification of the contradictions of capitalism’. It is at this time that we must defend the ‘ideals’, we must defend Cuba which shows another world is possible. He reminded the attendees, ‘internationalism is not just a phrase, but an attitude that should define us’.
Díaz Canel did not shy away from the precarious position that Cuba is in as he called the tightening of the blockade a ‘meticulously calculated genocide’ by forces that ‘conceive of the Cuban people only as a tool, a dying society, to turn against the government and achieve their sinister aims of overthrowing the revolution’.
As he pointed out, ‘Cuba does not have to indoctrinate anyone’. Cuba is looked to by the oppressed due to its example of what is possible when a country stands against imperialism despite the odds. Pressure not only comes from the US but from those other countries and financial institutions, including in Britain, which are complicit with the blockade. Communists need to stand against this complicity and speak the truth about Cuba.
Díaz Canel stated that ‘it is not enough to condemn the empire’. Communist parties from across the world heard this call to action – will they answer?
The Revolutionary Communist Group and Rock around the Blockade have organised consistent protests against the blockade since the 1990s. Our aim is to target those in Britain complicit in the blockade, and so we have led pickets outside the banks who illegally restrict transactions associated with Cuba.
We have renewed our calls for solidarity groups in Europe to launch coordinated pickets against banks that enforce the illegal US blockade, and for a Europe-wide day of action on 12 October against the banks, coinciding with the anniver-sary of Fidel’s 1979 address to the United Nations.
